Supping with the Don
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Before Puzo wrote “The Godfather”
Or Coppola made the first film,
We’d often eat with Don Corlene,
Or someone who did a heckuva good
Imitation of him, at Mary’s
On Bleeker Street in The Village.
He’d be there Sundays at a table by himself
In a dark corner, two lookout guys
Alert at a table near the front door
When my wife and I walked in.
The bodyguards did a fast frisk of us
With their beady eyes, then nodded
To wide-eyed, grandmotherly Mary
That it was okay for us to come in, sit.
The Don rarely looked up from his plate
Of sizzling shrimp swimming in garlic butter
Or steaming pasta with vongole sauce
Or pan-fried steak that Patsy,
Mary’s husband, pan seared in the kitchen
Just off the dining area with seven tables.
The thought of dining with a Mafioso
Did something to heighten our appetite.
After we read the book and saw the films,
It dawned on us that we could be
Wearing cement shoes and swimming
With the fishes in some river
Instead of calling Domino’s for a pizza
Out here in the boonies where we now live.
(This poem, or one like it, was published in some hard-print magazine but I’ve lost track of when and where)
Note: Mary’s delightful Italian restaurant was two and a half blocks around the corner from where we lived in 1961 in The Village in a brownstone, 65 Perry Street. Mary’s was in a walk-up brownstone, very small but fabulous eatery, the building perhaps the one where Coppola filmed his second Godfather epic, when DeNiro played the Don as a young man struggling to exist, feed his family. Some of the finest Italian meals in memory at Mary’s. Alas, we went back, many years later after moving to Colorado, found Mary and Patsy gone, the restaurant becoming a much larger (two floors), upscale eatery, not nearly as good – nor as atmospheric – as we remembered it. And no, the Don, was no longer seated in a dark corner (no dark corners!), protected by his two goons. Ah, so it goes…
